publications

Building a Mentoring Culture

by Larry Ambrose and Jim Perrone

Organizations of every description seek to develop future leaders, cultivate employee talent, find ways to increase opportunities for members of under-represented groups, and recruit and retain outstanding people. These are just some of the ways that corporations and public bodies can better position themselves for the challenges of production and service delivery.

For companies and service organizations to achieve such goals, building a mentoring culture is necessary for success. A mentoring culture mandates that its members help each other not only to produce but to grow, not only to get results but to learn, not only to achieve organizational goals but to become more empowered contributors. The most effective way to create this mentoring culture is to build and sustain strategically planned mentoring initiatives. In recent years, an increasing number of public sector agencies and more than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies have established and sustained a wide variety of structured mentoring systems.

Organizations set out to initiate mentoring programs for a variety of reasons. Most are driven by the intention to create, or reinforce, a mutually held systemic value that supports the organization’s culture and long-term health. Whether aimed at the value of organizational learning, globalization or leadership development, establishing a formal mentoring program is recognized as a practical tool for transforming a vague aspiration into organizational reality. But what does a successful mentoring program look like?

The following are typical descriptions of achievements credited to mentoring, based on our experience with hundreds of organizations:

“We can thank mentoring for cutting our employee turnover rate by 17 percent.”

“We have more under-represented people in our leadership pool because of our mentoring system.”

“We have a great mentoring program. We’re going into our seventh year.”

“Our program ended after two years, and we generated enough interest to let it run itself informally.”

Most successful mentoring initiatives have two things in common:

1. They directly reflect and support the organization’s strategic direction.
2. They are sustained over time.

Interestingly, these two essential criteria are the two most commonly ignored by mentoring program planners. Impatience is often responsible for the former. Planners, whether self-started or mandated by upper management, sometimes throw a mentoring program together without adequately considering the specific strategic intent of the system they want. In other words, they fail to clearly decide what mentoring should do for the participating individuals and for the organization.

Failure to sustain a program over time is often the result of poor planning about how the program and the mentoring pairs will be supported, and failure to realistically assess the stamina needed to provide the ongoing energy required to attain the desired outcome. A program may be well planned and have a clear strategic intent for the company or the agency but could fall apart due to lack of support—a failure that could have easily been avoided.

To have real impact on the culture and the individuals involved, a mentoring endeavor must be effective—and it must last. Ultimately, formal mentoring works best in an organization where learning and professional development are supported and nurtured by leadership at all levels. A mentoring culture embodies more than having a structure in place. Establishing a robust, meaningful, formal mentoring process provides visible and hard evidence that an organization’s leadership supports the cultural value the program is espousing.

Below are 12 elements critical to the success of a planned, strategic mentoring program:

1. A clear business case tied to the strategic direction of the organization.
2. Specific one-year implementation objectives.
3. Measurable three-year impact objectives.
4. Well-defined selection criteria for mentors and mentees that reflect the program’s strategic intent.
5. Expectations of mentors and mentees spelled out in concrete terms and directly communicated to mentors, mentees and managers.
6. A transparent process to match mentors with mentees, based on mentee developmental objectives, mentor skills and experience, and the strategic intent of the mentoring program itself.
7. A committed and actively involved mentoring planning/steering committee.
8. A coordinator with the time, resources and passion to maximize the potential impact of mentoring on talent development.
9. A rigorous orientation and training program for mentors and mentees focused on cultivating the mind-set and skill-set to establish and sustain a mentoring partnership, and which provides critical check-in points during the mentoring year.
10. A process to orient mentees’ managers on their role in supporting the mentoring program.
11. A communication process to inform the organization about the program and build support at all necessary levels.
12. An evaluation process to determine the success of the effort from the following perspectives:
    • The mentees’ and mentors’ expected outcomes
    • The program’s strategic intent
    • The one-year and three-year objectives

A dedicated adherence to these principles forms the foundation of an effective launch and management of a mentoring initiative. Here are some additional, not-so-obvious issues to consider:

• After launching a mentoring initiative, the work has only just begun. Do not make the mistake of believing that the hard work of planning and setting a mentoring program in motion is enough. Running a successful mentoring system takes stamina and constant dedication.
• It’s tempting to pay more attention to finding great mentors. It is actually more important to find great mentees, people who are open and committed to learning and growing through the risky business of trying new ways of thinking and acting.
• Take specific actions to provide ongoing support for your organization’s mentoring pairs. Plan periodic follow-up activities during the mentoring period as refreshers and to solicit feedback from the mentoring pairs. It is essential that they be convinced that your mentoring coordinator and committee are committed to their success.
• Never start a mentoring program with the thought of eventually shutting it down. If you are thinking about the ending of a mentoring program, you won’t do a great job of beginning it.

Larry Ambrose and Jim Perrone have been organization development consultants specializing in mentoring and coaching for more than 30 years. They founded Perrone-Ambrose Associates Inc., which has assisted hundreds of client organizations in making mentoring a key human development strategy. In 2006 they co-authored The Mentee’s Navigator.